The War of 1812, from A to Z

It’s become axiomatic among historians that Canadians know they won the War of 1812, Americans somehow think they won, and the Indians — who’d continue to cede land to American expansion — definitely know they lost, despite fighting alongside British regulars and Canadian militia.

The British, of course, have scant memory of the War of 1812, it being a distant, grubby affair that seemed at the time almost insignificant next to their titanic struggle against Napoleonic France.

But the war, about to be marked by all sorts of bicentennial commemorations, is arguably what gives both Canada and the United States their sense of identity…